Hello everyone, this is my first post here and undoubtedly not my last. I hope someone might give me some insight into this issue that I am dealing with. Let me preface this by saying that I am no means an expert, but I do have technical abilities above your average power user and I have successfully repaired several laptops in the past including soldering new components to the motherboard. In other words, I have the technical ability to perform most any repair given the proper guidelines. The issue: I have a Compaq Presario F700 which became waterlogged. The machine was not fully submerged, but it did get heavily soaked as it was outdoors when a sudden rainstorm came about and the rainwater spilling from the gutters poured directly into my open backpack that contained my laptop. I waited several hours before I attempted anything. Prior to the occurrence, the laptop battery worked and held a charge. After the soaking, the laptop would not boot and the three indicator lights (on/off, power indicator/drive activity) where blinking on and off in unison. I removed the battery and there was a little water in the battery bay which I dried off. I put the battery back in and plugged the ac power cord in. No boot. 8 hours later I removed the battery, hard drive and memory modules and inspected these areas of the board for any visible signs of damage. I saw none. I reinstalled all removable components except the battery, plugged in the power supply, and huzzah! it booted. Now, there was damage to the display as there was some bright splotchyness (is that a word?) which runs along the left side of the screen. I don't know if there is anything I can do to try to repair this, I am open to feedback. A new display for this machine only costs $90 but I am on a tight budget right now and if there are some experts out there that believe there is something that I can do to remedy this issue, I'm all ears. But anyway, the machine booted on the first attempt. I shut it down, installed the battery, and tried to boot on battery power. No go. I plugged the ac cord in and tried to boot. No go. I removed the battery, kept the power cord plugged in and turned it on. It powered up for about 5 seconds and shut itself off. I tried again and it powered up for about 2 seconds and shut off. I let it sit for another few hours and tried again. Same problem. That was last night. This morning, I plugged the ac adapter in and on first attempt the machine booted and it automatically ran the vista repair utility including a system restore. This rebooted the machine, and alas, I am typing this post on said machine. My questions to the users of this forum are: What specific components do you all believe where/are affected by the water damage? The laptop still won't work under battery power, so do you all think that the battery itself was damaged, or the leads that connect to the battery? I cannot afford to buy another battery to test at this time. Is there any further maintenance that you guys recommend I perform, or should I just consider myself lucky that the machine booted this morning and is working via ac adapter? Is it advised to remove this brightview display and attempt to clean out the splotchyness, or is such an attempt unwise and likely just to cause further damage? Any insight, advice is greatly appreciated on this matter. Thank you all for your time! EDIT: One day later, the battery works now and the splotchyness inside the display is almost gone. I am hoping that it will completely disappear if I just wait another day. This is a good laptop for the price and for the fact that I practically took it swimming.
I think you need to completely strip the lap top down and dry out the components as much as possible put your battery on a radiator this will help to restore the cells but youve no garauntees. If you can claim on your insurance id say thats the best solution
Yea, everything works great now. I had to figure this one out on my own since I didn't get any responses to my post in what...3 weeks???? Big help- thanks Hardwareforums.com!!
